


We are Remembered, Written in Blood

by Jadedphase



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellamy PoV, Episode: s01e13 We Are Grounders Part 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1882242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadedphase/pseuds/Jadedphase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had made the same mistakes of the past, he realized in a breathless moment when the flash of firelight blazed all around and in the shadows the enemy gathered; they had brought the worst of human nature back to an Earth that had spent so many long years recovering from the bout of foolish squabbling of their ancestors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We are Remembered, Written in Blood

The world was exploding all around hin, flashes of motion and color in the dark of night, false light crackling up in waves of small fires and the acidic scent of gunpowder on the wind. There was a taste upon the restless air like the tangy copper of a busted lip or broken tooth, a gritty sensation of filth erupting in clouds of lingering smoke that left behind a layer of gray over friend and foe alike until it became almost madness trying to sort one from the other.  
There was something disturbing in the thought but he didn't have the seconds to spare to consider it while everything was running at a pace that was swifter than his heart shoving erratic inside his aching ribs.

In a lifetime past he had thought the dragging loneliness of knowing how much he had lost, who he had lost, was the worst the world could force him to suffer.  
Knowing he had lost them for the sake of rules he had once sought to inforce had turned his faith into a bitter poison in his veins at the sight of the empty room that first crushing lonely night. That was it, the moment he had lost his trust in those rules and the idea that life could ever be fair.

It had broken something inside Bellamy. 

He had thought then that being reduced to doing nothing more than scrubbing floors and returning night after night to his silent home, counting the hours until his sister followed in the footsteps of their mother and he was truly left alone in the world, was the sort of hell person no person deserved. Knowing he had failed them both, let slip through his grasp the promise he had made his mother the day Octavia had come into the world; guilt was a worse prison sentence than if they had walled him up and stamped a date on his own days and hours of life remaining.

And then, in that new, green world, Bellamy had glimpsed in a moment of madness the souls of the lost, the ones who damned him for his actions and demanded he join them in their graves; it had stripped him down to nothing inside and for a brief second he would have crawled right into that scorched soil with them because they deserved that much.  
Knowing that he could not offer them the redemption they sought when he still wasn't certain how to even find his own had kept him from breaking again, only just barely, but redefined his idea of hell once more. 

He had been wrong in all of it; because that night Bellamy understood truly what hell was in vivid color and sound all around him. 

It was the song of dying screams from the ones who followed him, their faith anchored in the reassurance that he could lead them and the thudding echo of land mines that promised hints of victory on terrible terms. It was written on the ground slick with blood from both sides of the battle and across his own hands decorated with crimson. But most of all he saw it like a horror story staring back at him from the shell-shocked faces around him too young to cope with the burden heaped upon them. 

It was war in all the heartless, icy glory it could muster.

They had made the same mistakes of the past, he realized in a breathless moment when the flash of firelight blazed all around and in the shadows the enemy gathered; they had brought the worst of human nature back to an Earth that had spent so many long years recovering from the bout of foolish squabbling of their ancestors.  
And it was a war built with the hands of children because they hardly knew how to find another answer when the fear of death was looming over them other than the desperation of the fight.

Bellamy knew they were too far to turn back, death had found a way to them more swiftly and he could feel in the aching spot in his chest that had never really healed in the past; so few of them would still stand come the light of morning. 

He had led them to this; led them into the fire. 

The radio crackled in his hands and so distantly he heard desperate voices; his sister, Jasper, but the words were difficult for him to understand at first. They were out there in the night dying too, Bellamy's heart whispered; their trust in him had been stronger than many and because of that they were going to be destroyed by it.

If he lost them it was because of the demands he had allowed them to take, it was because he had placed his own faith in them when they very well may have deserved it but they did not deserve to die for it.

In trying to save his people he had brought them to the edge of the death's domain and all but pushed them across; Bellamy felt in that instant that he had made a mistake in trying to make soldiers out of children as much as he felt helpless knowing it was impossible to avoid. If they hadn't been as strong as they were now they would have already lost the battle, and he had to be proud of them for that. 

As suffocating as the burden was it was a necessary one when peace had fallen to the wayside; it was either fight or wait to be slaughtered in their beds.

He tore away from the wall, the voices all around him had become distant and he only barely registered his own words commanding those around him with a hoarse tone; giving orders like the leader he now longer felt he could be but they still needed of him.  
This fight would be the last for most of them; people he knew by name and face, some as near to being friends as he allowed himself to have.  
And the bitterness swelled inside him like an infection, knowing that there may have only been a fraction left to save when dawn breeched bloody over the hemorrhaging forest. 

A pair of frightened eyes reached his own and he saw it, the bolt of fear-driven motion that left him standing nearly alone there at the last defense the camp had; causing the sliver of refusal to bury deeper inside his heart.  
Somewhere his voice barked the order to hold the wall but Bellamy no longer felt as though he was the one saying the words so much as hearing them spill out from whatever part of him knew how to go on autopilot in the midst of that massacre.

Was this what he had meant when he'd said the words before? That they had to become the people they would need to if they were going to survive? 

The walls were faltering and death was whirling around them like a wildfire of blood and shattered lives; filling the night with the most sickening sounds the forest had been forced to endure in long years and Bellamy felt the weight of it down to the pit of his barely stitched-together soul.

If he had to kill the enemy with his bare hands then he would, if he could save any of his people, his friends, by doing so then he would find a way; because if he failed them what was there left of him without them?

What would be left of anything come morning? 

A war story is a black space. On the one side was before and on the other side the after, and what was inside belonged only to the dead.

If the before and the after didn't have someone left to carry it then they would all fade and their desperate mark on the world would be so quickly lost other than in terms of being a footnote of the Grounders' history. A footnote that would not be kind and would write them off as the invaders and enemy vanquished; and who they each had been would be reduced to urban legends to frighten little warrior children in their beds.

He felt the crashing walls so deep inside, knowing what it meant for them all when those final defenses fell, but he was already on his feet and moving fast; if he stayed still too long and allowed himself to be swallowed up by the wave of death then his chances to save what was left of them all would be taken away with his breath. 

He prayed Octavia would forgive him if he was facing his last fight, that Clarke would lead with more wisdom than he had, that Finn and Jasper and Raven and all the others would just make it through the night and at least remember something good about him if they ever thought of him again.  
That they would see at some point what he had been trying to do in making them all strong even if they would never know how much he regretted that terrible night pushing them to proving it.

For good or bad; hoped he wasn't forgotten. 

Bellamy stood firm when they came for him; it was not death that he feared in that moment as much as it was failure. If this was to be the final glimpse of hell he was granted he planned to pay it back in full for the spilled blood, drop for stolen drop, make them pay for what they had come there to take. He would make them fight for what they thought they had the right to destroy, for underestimating the strength they thought couldn't match their own. 

On the other side of that violent, hellish story the morning would rise and the survivors would begin the next chapter. And he hoped that the part written in their memory about him would be, for once, not about the losses he had suffered but for what he had, in the end, seen that was worth saving.


End file.
